This disclosure relates generally to providing information to an online system, and more specifically to selecting information describing objects maintained by an online system based on input provided by an online system user via a form provided by the online system.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users.
Various users of an online system provide information describing a content item to the online system, which generates the content item based on the provided information and subsequently presents the content item to other users of the online system. To encourage user interaction, online systems strive to streamline interactions for a user to provide information to the online system. For example, an online system provides its users with interfaces that seek to reduce a number of interactions to reach content, to reduce a number of characters a user inputs to provide content to the online system, or to reduce clutter when presenting content to users. Simplifying user interactions with an online system increases a likelihood that users interact with the online system; for example, simplifying an interface for providing content for generating a content item increases a likelihood of users providing information for generating content items to the online system.
However, users increasingly access online systems through client devices having input devices differing from traditional input devices, such as keyboards and mice. These different input devices limit the effectiveness of conventional techniques for simplifying user interaction with an online system. For example, conventional social networking systems are unable to effectively reduce the number of inputs (e.g., number of button presses or strokes) necessary for users to enter words or phrases for communication to the social networking system. Conventionally-used predictive text capabilities do not account for user-specific information, so they often do not suggest relevant words until after a user has entered a number of characters.